18 MR. SPONGE'S SPORTING TOUR. 



information as will enable them to form an idea of our hero's 

 ways and means. An accommodating world — especially the 

 female portion of it — generally attribute ruin to the racer, and 

 fortune to the fox-hunter ; but though Mr. Sponge's large losses 

 on the turf, as detailed by him to Mr. Buckram on the occasion 

 of their deal or " job," would bring him in the category of the 

 unfortunates ; still that representation was nearly, if not altogether, 

 fabulous. That Mr. Sponge might have lost a trifle on the great 

 races of the year, we don't mean to deny, but that he lost such a 

 sum as eighteen hundred on the Derby, and seven on the Leger, 

 we are in a condition to contradict, for the best of all possible 

 reasons, that he hadn't it to lose. At the same time we do not 

 mean to attribute falsehood to Mr. Sponge — quite the contrary — 

 it is no uncommon thing for merchants and traders, men who 

 "talk in thousands," to declare that they lost twenty thousand 

 by this, or forty thousand by that, simply meaning that they 

 didn't make it, and if Mr. Sponge, by taking the longest of the 

 long odds against the most wretched of the outsiders, might have 

 won the sums he named, he surely had a right to say he lost them 

 when he didn't get them. 



It never does to be indigenously poor, if we may use such a 

 term, and when a man gets to the end of his tether, he must have 

 something or somebody to blame rather than his own extravagance 

 or imprudence, and if there is no "rascally lawyer" who has 

 bolted with his title-deeds, or fraudulent agent who has misappro- 

 priated his funds, why then, railroads, or losses on the turf, or 

 joint-stock banks that have shut up at short notice, come in as 

 the scapegoats. Very willing hacks they are, too, railways espe- 

 cially, and so frequently ridden, that it is no easy matter to 

 discriminate between the real and the fictitious loser. 



But though we are able to contradict Mr. Sponge's losses on the 

 turf, we are sorry we are not able to elevate him to the riches the 

 character of a fox-hunter generally inspires. Still, like many men 

 of whom the common observation is, "nobody knows how he 

 lives," Mr. Sponge always seemed well to do in the world. There 

 was no appearance of want about him. He always hunted ; some- 

 times with five horses, sometimes with four, seldom with less than 

 three, though at the period of our introduction he had come down 

 to two. Nevertheless, those two, provided he could but make 

 them " go," were well calculated to do the work of four. And 

 hack horses, of all sorts, it may be observed, generally do double 

 the work of private ones ; and if there is one man in the world 

 better calculated to get the work out of them than another, that 

 man most assuredly is Mr. Sponge. And this reminds us, that 

 we may as well state that his bargain with Buckram was a sort of 

 jobbing deal. He had to pay ten guineas a month for each horse, 



